The billions that go into trying to find a cure might save more lives whether they were spent on better understanding heart and lung diseaseAccording to the Office for National Statistics’ mortality figures,cancers vie for first area with heart and circulation diseases. But spending on the search for a cancer cure and the medication bill for its victims dwarfs the research into any other disease. It overwhelms the attempt to stamp out some of the common diseases that still blight parts of the developing world, such as the $5bn that the polio eradication campaign is raising.
Cancer has an extraordinary grip on the western imagination. In some ways, and that is unsurprising. It often seems to strike its victims young and to kill them slowly. And over the past couple of decades the modern genre of cancer memoir has given us haunting personal accounts written by mothers and fathers and teenagers,records written with lacerating courage describing preparations for death in a society increasingly reluctant to let people go. Cancer is special: so special that David Cameron is prepared to sanction a special fund to pay for drugs that do not meet the strict efficacy controls imposed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com